


Looking into Our Own Eyes

by opheliasparks



Series: The Synchronicity of Twinship [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Bodyswap, Fred/George - Freeform, Gen, Multi, Sharing a Body, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliasparks/pseuds/opheliasparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it happened, it was <i>shocking</i>, but somehow not <i>unexpected</i>. The twins were nearing their 6th birthday, but that was something they put together later, talking through the details of the day and what they could remember of the time surrounding it. The event itself took place on just an ordinary day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking into Our Own Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [this post](http://amazonpoodle.tumblr.com/post/81520248612/what-if-the-reason-nobody-can-tell-fred-and-george) and encouraged much to my detriment by the enthusiasm and sounding board of my friend Shaun (wombatsexy on tumblr). I hope you enjoy.

The first time it happened, it was _shocking_ , but somehow not _unexpected_. The twins were nearing their 6 th birthday, but that was something they put together later, talking through the details of the day and what they could remember of the time surrounding it. The event itself took place on just an ordinary day.

It was dry outside, something of a miracle in Ottery St. Catchpole at that time of year, and the sun was shining. Molly Weasley was about at her wit’s end with four boys under the age of 14 running around the house (Ron and Ginny were still young enough that they weren’t so much under foot), so she had very firmly sent them outside with instructions to _not return until dinner, d’you hear me?_ So out they had trooped. Bill and Charlie were perfectly fine with the edict, wandering off together to trade facts about magical monsters and eventually to a rowdy game of pretend that involved something to do with a dragon. Fred and George happily trotted off in another direction, already in the habit of being basically glued at the hip, snickering about something and chattering loudly at intervals. Percy was the only one truly distressed, but he knew that if his brothers went out, so did he; he grabbed a book and headed in a third direction, finding a tree out of sight of his brothers and free of gnomes and used the banishment as an opportunity for peace and quiet.

After some lazy roughhousing across the empty expanse of the lawn, the twins ended up laying on their backs at the edge of the pond, giggling and gasping for breath. They were always happy to be outside, especially on the rare occasions that the weather was nice, and having the full afternoon to themselves was a gift, not a punishment. It was in this moment of semi-exhausted quiet that the first _event_ took place. For a second, almost over quick enough to be written off as active imagination, their perspectives on the sky shifted. Everything was normal by the time they sat up, staring at each other wide-eyed and still flushed from their antics.

“Say George,” Fred said quietly. “Didja feel that?” The other boy didn’t answer right away, squinting a little at his brother now, the feeling of the occurrence slipping away like a dream in the instant of waking. Before he could answer, it happened again.

This time it lasted a little longer, a few seconds of the most surreal experience they could collectively remember. For a few moments, each boy was seeing his own face as if he was looking in a mirror. But that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t a mirror. It was his own face, and suddenly each could tell some of the differences between them, a freckle here and a slightly different curve there. Like the last time, the universe righted itself before they could really process what had happened. This time, though, there was absolutely no denying that _something_ had happened.

“Felt that one,” George said quietly. Both boys sat in shocked silence for a few minutes, young minds whirring at the utter strangeness of what had occurred. Almost as if on cue, a mirrored grin spread across both faces, a brightness in their eyes that their younger siblings would eventually come to fear and love in equal measure.

“Wicked,” They said on the same breath as a world of possibility opened before them.

 

***

 

Of course, even the great things don’t come easily. The next few years were littered with bruises and awkward silences, falls and mistrusted explanations. The events stayed nearly unpredictable for a long time, and the boys couldn’t get anyone to believe their story for the life of them. Being mischief-makers outside of this tricky switching made everything all the more harried. They gained a reputation with their siblings and parents and every single extended relation for being “trouble”. It was muttered under breaths, passed from mouth to mouth until the entire family and several far-off sets of neighbors knew that Those Weasley Twins were a little wild. The Dung-Bomb Affair with Great Aunt Muriel and Christmas dinner probably didn’t help that reputation. They were well-loved all the same. There was just something about big brown eyes and matching freckled faces and small disarming smiles that kept them close in the hearts of everyone they met.

Ron’s 6th birthday and his first display of magical talent (just _why_ he had ended up completely naked, stuck against the ceiling of his room, screaming was still a bit of a mystery) gave them the perfect opportunity to move into the same room. Ron and Ginny were too old now to be bunking together, according to Molly and Arthur, and really, Fred and George ended up in the same bed often enough anyway that it just made more sense. There was quite a bit of shuffling around the Burrow to get everyone in a harmonious arrangement again, but eventually things settled down. This was the beginning of things settling down for the twins and their peculiarity as well.

The Events (it had started out as a bland descriptor and somehow morphed into a near-sacred title) had settled into something of a rhythm. There was no predictable pattern, of course, but it didn’t seem to occur in flashes nearly as often as it had in the beginning. There would be whole days where the boys would stay in the body they had woken in, though that may not have been the one they fell asleep in. Handling this aspect became much easier when they were living in the same room. As they woke in the morning, each boy would inspect his surroundings and ‘his’ body to see if it was the one he had been in the night before. Before either encountered another member of the family, they would sit down and decide who was who for the day and how to dress so as to differentiate themselves. (The intensity of this differentiation depended on the day, their plans, and if they wanted anyone else to be able to tell). Maybe George was in a blue jumper for the day and Fred in a green one. Maybe their trousers were a slightly different shade of brown. Maybe everything matched except for a small handkerchief sticking out of the left pocket.

Somewhere near the 6th month mark after the first Event, the twins lost track of which body had originally belonged to which boy. Was it Fred who had the slightly rounder eyes and the cowlick at the right side of his forehead? Was it George whose toes were slightly longer and whose left thumbnail never seemed to grow out just the same as his right? After they lost track, the two spent some time diligently trying to figure it out again, or to decide one way or the other, but when the Event was happening 6 or 7 times in a day and again in a night, well… it just didn’t seem worth it. Neither had ever been particularly possessive of his belongings, at least where his other half was concerned, so why should this be any different?

Things still weren’t running smoothly by age 9, but they were better. In the early days, Fred and George had spent more time apart, participating in separate activities across the Burrow. It led to George tripping over a stick when he hadn’t been walking a moment before. It caused Fred to burn his hand rather badly while Molly had been teaching “George” to make a certain kind of stew. After that particular occurrence, Molly had decided the boys were at that time a little unfit for detail-oriented things like cooking. After a rather harrowing fall off a low-flying broomstick, the twins made the decision that they were together, for better or worse. Despite all of this, for a few months their family considered them distractible and empty-headed because both boys had a habit of freezing mid-action to reorient themselves to the new activity or trailing off mid-sentence when an Event occurred because they just didn’t know what the other one had been saying.

It took ages to work that particular bug out of the system, but by the time they were earnestly preparing to start school, they were nearly perfectly adept at acting like the Events weren’t happening at all. The synchronicity that seemed to come with the territory of twinship was rather pronounced in them, but no one found it out of place by this point. Sentences would start in one boy’s mouth and finish in the other’s, sometimes due to an Event and sometimes just because they liked the way it felt to be so perfectly aligned. Clothing and books and other possessions were equally held by both Fred and George, neither experiencing jealousy over those things or being very territorial. There was no point. It was sometimes amusing to see the looks on their family members faces when Fred would stop in the middle of a page of a book and hand it off to George, receiving the book the other was reading in turn.

Food tastes were the only aspect of their interchangeable natures that got a little tricky. The preferences were rooted in the self inhabiting the body rather than the body itself most of the time, and while there weren’t a lot of things that one twin liked that the other didn’t, the few discrepancies were intense. Fred _detested_ orange juice. Absolutely couldn’t stand it. George loved it and would happily have it at every breakfast. Molly was plagued with doubt at times because she couldn’t seem to tell her two sons apart enough to remember which one would drink three glasses of the stuff in a sitting and which one would nearly spit it out. She would set the table and have all the children settled for the meal when George ( _of course_ it was George, she could tell her children apart, that wasn’t Fred, was it?) would whine a little. “But mum, orange juice” and she would stare at him in wonder for a moment before switching the cup to his brother’s place. Eventually she just decided that it was one of their many pranks and it stopped feeling like a mark against her motherhood.

It would be another year or so before they worked out what triggered the Events or began to recognize the feeling that each got a split moment before the switch, and another few before there was anything voluntary about who was in which body, but that didn’t feel dire to the two mischievous youngsters. Besides, by the time they boarded the Hogwarts Express for the first time, the Events were so commonplace as to be just a part of the fabric of their reality. They were caught in the wonder of the years ahead of them, joining Bill, Charlie, and Percy at school and finally getting to use the wands that had been calling to them for months. In the tumult that surrounded the new stage of their lives, it was hard to worry about something that had been happening so regularly for five years, nearly half of their short lives. The Events just _were_ , and it was part of what made Fred and George who _they_ were. There were challenges ahead that they could not yet foresee, but from the vantage point of their present moment, everything was looking up.

**Author's Note:**

> This is currently all I have written, but if my time, my brain, and audience response cooperate I might be writing a full multi-chapter, multi-work fic. We'll see how it goes.
> 
> Next Chapter Is Up! Look for Hogwarts Was Not Prepared, Pt 2 of The Synchronicity of Twinship!


End file.
